The Inseparables – Finborough Theatre, London

Writer: Grace Joy Howarth, based on a novella by Simone de Beauvoir

Director: Anastasia Bunce

The Inseparables is a charming piece of theatre. Adapted by Grace Joy Howarth from Simone de Beauvoir’s semi-autobiographical novella, it captures a period of intense friendship between two French girls, Sylvie and Andrée, from childhood to young womanhood. Shadowed, albeit distantly, by the First World War, the play explores the traditional pressure exerted by family and church on bourgeois girls. De Beauvoir wrote The Inseparables in 1954, but it was only published in 2020, Jean-Paul Sartre having discouraged her from making it public.

When Andrée first bursts into Sylvie’s life aged nine, both girls are passionate readers. Andrée is also passionate about music and dance. In a captivating performance by Lara Manela, she burns with energy, dancing and cartwheeling or exuberantly playing the violin. Manela is perfectly cast in the role of this elfin, unmistakably French spirit. As Sylvie, Ayesha Ostler is altogether more down-to-earth, a much more self-conscious schoolgirl, writing letters to Andrée, who somehow misses their underlying passion.

Indeed, the play is very much about Sylvie’s intense devotion to Andrée, stoically hiding the depth of her feelings as Andrée, over time, is involved with one, then another, young man. In an early fantasy about Andrée dying, Sylvie imagines herself dying instantly of grief. There has been much biographical interest about de Beauvoir, as the real-life Sylvie and her girlhood passion for Zaza Lacoin. Was this, as many have thought, a tragic lesbian love story? Playwright Howarth and director Anastasia Bunce handle the question with delicacy, consciously siting The Inseparables in a realm of innocence. The passions are vividly real, the girls’ understanding of those feelings opaque.

It’s a slight, straightforward story. Despite Andrée’s evident intelligence – both young women attend the Sorbonne – her early rebellion against family and religion is soon quelled. Her domineering mother, Madame Gallard, in a fine performance by Caroline Trowbridge, makes it clear that a suitable arranged marriage is her destiny: love is regarded as suspect. An intense relationship between the fifteen-year-old Andrée and a decent young Argentine is quickly quashed.

But when Andrée meets Sylvie’s altogether more complicated intellectual friend Pascal (a suitably intense Alexandre Costet-Barmada), it is he, rather than Madame Gallard, who controls Andrée’s subsequent beliefs and feelings. She begins, once again, in a series of overly hammy scenes, to take communion. The couple are going to be separated, but Pascal refuses to declare his love. In a rather Charlotte Brontë-esque turn, it is Andrée’s burning passions that turn into life-threatening fever.

The staging of The Inseparables in the Finborough’s tiny space is compelling, appealingly designed by Hazel Poole Zane; lighting designer Abraham Walking-Lea transforms unremarkable domestic rooms into a chapel, lit with a stained glass window, or quaintly written projections (Jessica Braumer) to remind us of the date. Flick Isaac Chilton’s sound design is glorious, offering, amongst other things, lovely moments of Allegri’s Miserere not just to remind us of the ever-present Catholic Church, but of its aesthetic appeal.

The Inseparables is intensely watchable, held together by excellent performances.

Runs until 10 May 2025